Parallels Announces Public Beta of Hosted Control Panel

Virtualization company Parallels opens up a public beta for its hosted control panel software, Parallels Panel 10 SMB Edition.

Virtualization and automation
company Parallels launched the public beta of Parallels Panel 10 SMB Edition -
a hosted control panel software aimed at helping hosting and cloud services
providers broaden their offerings and better meet small to medium-size
businesses (SMBs) needs. The solution introduces Parallels Partner Marketplace,
which Parallels said enables hosters to enter the software-as-a-service (SAAS)
market and provides SMBs access to a number of IT and business applications,
including e-commerce, customer relationship management, human resources,
accounting, video conferencing, Web content management and e-mail.

"Parallels has been
working on a number of best-of-breed ISVs over recent years to launch these
offerings," said the company's president of service provider division Jack
Zubarev. "We're bringing ISVs and hosters together and helping both become
more profitable."The company is positioning Partner Marketplace as the
central feature of Parallels Panel 10 SMB Edition control panel, which lets
hosters profit from the (SAAS) market by offering the most popular applications
through the control panel, including Interspire's e-mail marketing and Pinnacle
Cart's e-Commerce shopping cart.

"Interspire's e-Mail
Marketer and Knowledge Manager Application enables businesses to grow faster
and as such are ideal applications to add to Parallels Partner
Marketplace," said Interspire CEO Eddie Machaalani. "Hosters can
readily deliver our business-critical applications to their customers to
increase revenue, while Parallels takes care of the set-up, provisioning,
billing and management of the applications." Small businesses utilize the
Marketplace directly from their control panel and can self-serve hosted and
desktop applications with a few clicks of the mouse, from managing users to
websites and domains, to e-mail, applications and scripts. "We are happy
to have joined forces with Parallels Partner Marketplace," said Pinnacle
Cart founder and vice president of product development Craig Fox.
"Parallels Partner Marketplace lets hosters deliver SaaS quickly and
cost-effectively and simultaneously provides SMBs with the applications they
need to stay competitive. Now we can easily offer our e-Commerce Shopping Cart
to potentially millions of SMBs through Parallels Partner Marketplace." Parallels also said Panel 10
SMB edition also helps hosters develop new revenue streams by offering their
midmarket customers add-on on applications like SpamAssassin, Helpdesk, Tomcat,
ColdFusion and MSSQL for increased average revenue per user (ARPU). The company
offers hundreds of commercial business applications through its APS Catalog and
also offers a "power plan" that grants end users (SMBs) access to the entire application
library. Other features include a site builder tool to help create
professional-looking Websites, roles-based user set up, which allows users to
see only the tools designated for them and collaboration and productivity tools
such as time tracking, CRM, file sharing and blogs. "Our SMB customers have been waiting for
a control panel that doesn't require technical knowledge or design skills to
build and manage their IT operations, said Amy Armitage, director of business
development for SMB-focused Web hosting company Lunarpages. "Parallels
Panel SMB Edition meets this critical business need and takes it one-step
further with on-demand software that SMBs need to compete and thrive.

Nathan Eddy is Associate Editor, Midmarket, at eWEEK.com. Before joining eWEEK.com, Nate was a writer with ChannelWeb and he served as an editor at FierceMarkets. He is a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.